Page 56 of Crash Course
For this, she paused. She’d been thinking about this all day. About having to admit she’d meddled in her father’s business and about raising his ire. In truth, anticipating Dad’s wrath gave her a sick feeling.
Still, it had to be done. They needed answers. "I’ll have to. I believe someone on his staff might be keeping him in the dark about the PFOA levels."
"Why do you need to tell him?"
"Aside from the EPA fines that rack up to millions? Not to mention possible class action lawsuits. If he intends to buy contaminated property, he needs the entire picture, even if it pisses him off that I’m questioning the inner workings of his company. He doesn’t like to be questioned."
"Even when you’re helping him?"
"He might see it as interference. Or me judging the performance of his handpicked executives."
He took a second, apparently running her comments through that whip-smart brain of his. "Why do I feel like there’s more?"
"More?"
"Yeah. Your father wants to buy property he may know is contaminated. Obviously, since your dad called the Tates, someone on his staff knows their daughter is sick. Why else would he tell them about a Community Resource Fund?"
So intuitive. What had she said that led him to nail exactly—exactly—what she’d been worried about? As if he’d crawled around in her brain, rooted through all the nonsense, and drilled down to the one thing she didn’t want to believe.
That her father would try to avoid a lawsuit by buying the property before the Tates thought to have the soil or water tested.
"Speaking of which," she pulled her phone from her jacket pocket. "I’ve never heard of a Community Resource Fund. Let’s check on that."
"How?"
"I can remotely log into the company’s system. I’ll do a search and see what I find."
Using Dad’s login again, she got to the knowledge database and searched for Community Resource Fund. Nothing.
Hmmm . . .
She narrowed her search. Service fund. Nothing.
Next she tried the word community and received dozens of hits.Here we go.She scrolled the list of topics, clicking on a couple that looked promising yet fell flat.
Terrific. She’d have to dive in later. She logged out and set the phone down.
"I found a bunch of links," she said. "Too much to mess with now."
He narrowed his gaze, and then ripped off a tantalizing smile. How she wanted those lips on hers again.
"Nice job deflecting," Cruz said.
Busted."Deflecting?"
"I think you’re worried about how much your father knows. I hit a nerve and you distracted yourself with a search for some Community Resource Fund that may or may not exist."
Damn. The. Man.
If he expected her to slice open a vein and bleed out all her emotional rubble, he’d be waiting awhile. A long while. What was the point of sharing her worries? Worrying did no good.
She rested her forearms on the table and loosely clasped her hands. "What do you want me to say?"
He shrugged. "Nothing. And everything."
All righty then."What does that mean?"
"I’m trying to help you. We’re on this goose chase with soil samples—"
